We must not, however, delude ourselves into thinking, because that
definition sounds so reasonable and pacific, and, indeed, is reasonable and pacific in itself, that it will win universal approval abroad. Those who feel inclined to say : "That being our policy, how is it possible that any one in the world can want to quarrel with us P" will be making a capital error. What sounds so reasonable to us looks very different to the more ambitious' Powers of the world. What they say, and what, from their point of view, we suppose we must admit they have a right to say, is something of this kind :—" You have acquired by means which you think magnificent, but which we venture to say were of a very doubtful kind, half the best places on the face of the globe. You have eaten till you can eat no more, and now with a full stomach you lecture us about the necessity for restraint in the pleasures of the table and the morality of every one keeping what he has got and not envying his neighbours. We warn you, however, as you bask in the sun enjoying your after-dinner rest that we who have
not enjoyed your dinner and. find no place in the sun to sit in take a very different view of the delights of the status quo." In a word, keeping what we have got and consolidating and developing it is not by any means the peace-making operation which might be gathered from Sir Edward Grey's speech.
Nor, indeed, is "upholding in the councils of the world in diplomacy those ideals in every part of the world by which we set so much store at home" the easy or the conciliatory thing it sounds. We cannot unfortunately forget that there are Powers in Europe to whom liberty, Constitutional government, the freedom of the Press, and the policy of government of the people by the people for the people seem not magnificent achievements, but merely bad examples.
